Framework For Service Creation Research Articles

Policy-based model-driven creation of adaptive services in wireless environments

This article advocates the shift of the adaptive service engineering attention from the external service execution environment to the internal service logic itself. This article presents a novel adaptive service creation solution called POETRY that takes advantages of two promising techniques: PBM (Policy-based Management) and MDA (Model-driven Architecture). In particular, the POETRY service creation framework has investigated the thought of utilizing a policy-based management method to describe and control the internal logic of adaptive services and the method of utilizing MDA models to describe the adaptive service information model. The design details and operations of POETRY are presented and showcased via a typical adaptive service scenario.

Creating value added services in internet telephony: an overview and a case study on a high-level service creation environment

Value added services, or more simply - services, are the critical ingredient for the success and the survival of Internet Telephony. Services can be defined as anything that goes beyond two party voice calls. Some examples are multiparty gaming, customized stock quotes and call screening. This paper focuses on service creation in Internet Telephony. Service creation plays a major role in Internet Telephony because it enables openness and programmability by offering frameworks for the development of value added services. Two principal sets of standards have emerged for Internet Telephony: H.323 from the ITU-T and SIP from the IETF. No service creation framework comes with the H.323 set. Two frameworks come with the SIP set: the Call Processing Language (CPL) and the SIP common gateway interface (CGI). Besides the IETF, other forums such as Parlay and JAIN have proposed pertinent frameworks. The first part of the paper provides an overview of the service creation frameworks for Internet Telephony. A common characteristic of these frameworks is that they require knowledge that nonexperts may not have (e.g., scripts, programming languages). High-level service creation environments may help these nonexperts. The second part of the paper presents a case study on a high level service creation environment (SCE) where pre-defined graphical components are combined into services. The environment is discussed in detail along with the service logic execution environment (SLEE) where the services are executed. The SCE and SLEE make no assumption on the service creation framework supported by the network, and any of the standard frameworks could be used provided it offers the functionality abstracted in the graphical components. We have used the Parlay APIs as a framework and the prototype is built for a SIP environment. The prototype is described and the lessons we have learned are presented.

Service creation for next-generation networks

The ability to more easily create and deploy new services is a major driver for movement toward next-generation converged communication networks. There are many approaches to provide this ability, each suited to different kinds of services, customers, and network operators. This paper presents a framework for service creation that organizes service creation methods. It can be used to help select the most appropriate enabling products and technologies. We define a set of domains of services and show how different methods of service creation apply to each of these domains. We show how the various methods of service creation differ in the ways they define the service, distribute the definition to network elements, interpret or execute the definition, and perform the functions that embody the service. We also explore how networks can expose application programming interfaces, protocol interfaces, and user interfaces to allow third parties to create services.

Mobile agent and CORBA technologies in the broadband intelligent network

This article presents an IN architecture that is based on distributed object and mobile agent technologies. It deviates from traditional IN in two prominent ways: first, by substituting message-based protocols with a CORBA distributed processing environment. The new communications infrastructure not only serves to convey IN flows, but also functions as a potent unifying location-transparent layer. Second, the new architecture makes heavy use of mobile agent technology. Service logic programs are implemented as mobile agents, and are thus not constrained to control the switch's operations remotely from a central location. Instead, they can migrate and control its operations locally. The infrastructure elements of the architecture exploit this ability of service logic programs by cloning them and dragging their clones to the appropriate locations in response to excess processing or signaling load. The architecture is in this way self-balancing, in contrast to the centralized nature of traditional IN. A prototype implementation is presented along with a service creation framework that enables the IN service designer to disregard environment-related issues and concentrate on the IN logic of the services per se.